>>2938374The brands are magical; Destroying any clothing that covers them up. The location of the brand is based on 'what' committed the crime. The duration is based on severity.
>Stealing a loaf of bread = Brand your hands for a few days>Stealing priceless gems = Brand your hands for a few years>Committing treason = Brands your chest since your 'heart' committed the crime>Staring at the lord's concubines = Brand near your eyes for a few hours (A week if it was his favorite woman)The protagonist gets into a tavern brawl where her hands are pinned, so she wraps her legs around the other guy's face and squeezes her thighs together until he passes out. Since her thighs committed the crime, her brand gets placed between her legs (Everybody who sees this assumes that she's being punished for prostitution).
As it turns out, the guy she knocked out was an important lord and he is humiliated because he was beaten up by a woman. So to get even he tries to humiliate her in various ways like stealing what little clothing she can wear and then accusing her of public indecency (meaning it's all her naughty bits that did the crime). He bribes the court mage who is responsible for the branding to 'mess up' the magic and cause her brand to vibrate slightly at random times making her aroused against her will. And he manages to convince the authorities that she can 'repay her debt to society' and serve her sentence with indentured servitude - forced to be his naked maid.
His long-term goal is to 'break' her until she's completely obedient to his will, but as she's humiliating herself again and again she slowly uncovers a bunch of corrupt deals he's been making behind the king's back and exposes his crimes. In the end, she's rewarded by having a magical statue made in her image (her current, nude image) and the lord is thrown into the deepest possible dungeon alongside all his co-conspirators (including the mage who branded her and is only one who knows how to undo the magic).
